394 Big Game Fishes 



wail. Did ever a salmon of the pool make so 

 splendid a rush ? Your line is melting like the 

 snow on the distant Sierras in this morning sun. 

 You have been playing the fish for ten minutes, 

 but the sport has just begun, and two hundred 

 feet, perhaps three hundred, away, after a desper- 

 ate leap, the chief of the chinooks is hammering 

 away, dealing you lusty blows, and preparing to 

 dive deep into the azure waters. Down it 

 plunges. You feel the throbbing of the line, and 

 reel and lift, making line slowly against this marvel 

 of game fishes which, when again at the surface, 

 alternately rushes and plunges, and sometimes 

 tell it not in Gath! hurls the hook from 

 its jaws, to eye you a second and slowly dis- 

 appear. But you wear the talisman of good luck, 

 and the gallant salmon comes in, fighting every 

 inch, a splendid quarry, the type of all that is best 

 in the angler's score, a perfect game fish in play 

 and edible quality. 



On such a day and in this very place, Mr. 

 Whitney took twenty-seven salmon from daylight 

 to five o'clock in the afternoon, weighing four 

 hundred and eighty-two pounds, a record which 

 if it has been exceeded in the beautiful bay of 

 Carmel has not been recorded. I can conceive 



